Mr. Deeds Goes To Town

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All Rise...

The Charge

Rocking America with Laughter.

Opening Statement

The above is what the critics had to say about Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,
the latest issue in the Columbia Classics Collection. I wouldn't call it
hilarious by today's standards, but it still maintains a sense of humor and
charm while presenting a touching, meaningful story that has not gone out of
date. Another wonderful restoration of a classic film by Columbia, though
perhaps not with quite as much effort as for It Happened One Night.

The Evidence

Following the great success of It Happened One Night, Frank
Capra was a bit scared to get working on a new film right away. After all,
expectations would be high after garnering all 5 of the big Oscars from his last
film. He went ahead and did Broadway Bill, but he was looking for
something that would be more of a landmark film. Lost Horizon was to be that film, but
Ronald Colman, who later starred in it, could not break away from his current
projects until the next year. It was then that he took a look at a story that
led to the script for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. This film also almost
didn't get made. Capra was convinced that Gary Cooper (High Noon, Meet John Doe, The Fountainhead) was
the only actor who could fill the lead role, but he was also busy, but only for
6 months. Rather than move ahead with someone else, Capra waited for him, and
added another $100,000 to the cost of the film for it. Of course he was given a
lot more leeway now that he had proven himself the golden goose of Columbia.

During the wait he had cast the rest of the roles, and had Carole Lombard
lined up for the female lead. Only 3 days before filming she backed out in favor
of another film (My Man Godfrey).
Shooting actually began without a female lead while a frantic search began.
Looking through dailies, Capra spied a blond, squeaky voiced lady who caught his
eye. Though dissuaded by Cohn and others from Columbia from using her, he
persevered and Jean Arthur (Mr. Smith Goes
to Washington, The Plainsman, Shane) was cast. I don't quite understand
Capra's luck with female leads, but she, like Claudette Colbert in It
Happened One Night, was also a difficult actress. She too had a "good
side" and was constantly stalling in her dressing room. In actuality she
was overly nervous rather than arrogant, however, and Capra nursemaided her
through the shooting.

At a then-staggering cost of over $800,000, the film was finally shot. But
the magic of the writing of Robert Riskin (It Happened One Night, Lost
Horizon, Meet John Doe) and Frank Capra's master direction held true
again, and the film was a big hit, garnering over a million dollars in it's
first theatrical run, and being nominated for Academy Awards for Best
Screenplay, Best Sound, Best Picture, Best Actor, and winning Capra's second of
three Oscars for Best Director.

This was the first of several films that Capra would make spotlighting the
plight of the common man overcoming the deception and greed of the rich fat
cats, a type of film Capra would later speak of with disdain, calling it
CapraCorn. That he would later attempt to distance himself from such films is
not surprising; given the insidious blacklisting instigated by the House
Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). No Hollywood artist remained
untouched—including Frank Capra. His past films extolling the virtues of
the downtrodden little guy over the cruel manipulation of the bigwigs did not
appeal to the more conservative individual that Capra had become, perhaps
because of the committee. Today such films are cherished as among his best, and
I would certainly agree. But at the time, he was looking at how well Hollywood
was doing, as the Depression stricken masses flocked to movies to forget their
troubles, while those masses were doing so poorly. He decided to do a film that
would address the social issues of the haves and have-nots, a topic that remains
relevant today.

The story begins with the death of an elderly playboy named Semple in an
auto accident in Italy. It turns out that he has left his entire $20 million
fortune to a nephew he has never met. The first of several newspaper montages
announce the death and the speculation for the name of the heir. We meet the
first of the main characters here. A cynical news editor MacWade (George
Bancroft) demands the name of the heir so he can get a scoop from Cornelius
Cobb, the cigar smoking, frog-voiced public relations man for the deceased. He
denies knowing anything, while sitting in a room with the lawyers, including the
obsequiously slimy and scheming John Cedar, who discovers the name of the heir.
Longfellow Deeds (Cooper) is the nephew; a tuba playing greeting card poet from
the small town of Mandrake Falls, Vermont. Cobb and the lawyers rush off to
Vermont, and after a scene that was probably hilarious in it's time finally
reach him. Surprisingly they discover that when the duplicitous Cedar tells him
the "good news" about his inheritance, he barely flinches,
uninterested and unemotionally affected by the money. He is actually more
interested in trying out the new mouthpiece on his tuba than about the money.
Even the housekeeper blurts out: "How about lunch? Are the gentlemen going
to stay or not?" The city slickers are astounded by Deeds, who doesn't
react according to their expectations. In fact, he ponders: "I wonder why
he left me all that money. I don't need it!" (The reaction from a
Depression-Era audience must have been audible.)

It turns out that Deeds must go to New York, and gets a rousing send-off
from the town. We discover when they arrive in New York that the law firm had
been embezzling from Semple and needs to gain power of attorney from Deeds
quickly lest he discover the missing half million dollars. However, they are
supremely confident, believing Deeds to be a half-wit and perhaps the most
naïve man on the planet. In fact Deeds is an enigma; in some ways showing
utter innocence to the ways of the world, but in others showing sharp business
acumen and common sense. Deeds puts off immediately hiring Cedar's firm and
deals quickly and handily with the now-circling sharks trying to get a share of
his money. He is made chairman of the opera committee because they think that he
will pick up their entire yearly deficit, but he says that the opera must
instead be put on a profitable basis.

We see here in this part of the film the beginning of Deed's empathy with
the common man, telling one servant trying to dress him "Never get on your
knees again." Unfortunately his faith in human nature and goodness is to be
sorely tested with nearly everyone around him (except surprisingly Cobb who
remains loyal) having an ulterior motive. The newspapers are near the head of
that list, as MacWade exhorts his reporters to get a story on the new
millionaire in their midst by any means. The sharp, sassy, street savvy Babe
Bennett (Jean Arthur) figures she has an angle to get the inside story, and gets
it; thanks to pretending to faint right in front of Deeds at his front gate.
Being a sucker for a lady in distress (god help all men with the white knight
complex) he takes her out to dinner and is completely smitten. She manages to
stir up trouble in the restaurant by egging him into punching out the literary
celebs who have blatantly made fun of him. One of the authors, a drunken sot,
compliments Deeds though, and convinces him, with Bennett's (who is calling
herself Mary Dawson) help, to go on a binge with him, the first time Deeds has
gotten drunk. His drunken escapades, resulting in him being escorted home by the
police in his underwear, make front page copy in the newspaper, along with a new
moniker "Cinderella Man." The articles continue as she cultivates his
trust and affection and he continues to do some odd things about town.

There is a lot of plot left to cover, but I'm not going to give it away,
except in these general terms. Deeds becomes the "everyman" and hero
to the poor and downtrodden, but not before undergoing some serious problems and
issues. As a contemporary critic wrote "Capra gives you a happy ending, but
he sure makes you pay for it." And of course romance blooms between the
reporter and Deeds, but how can she be with him after she has betrayed him? This
plot device is pretty tired now, but I'll give them credit for using it long
before others copied it to death. Other now-stereotypical aspects of the film
are excused here because this was the era of films that invented them, like the
gangster speech of his former bodyguards "He locked us in a room,
see?" in the voice James Cagney would later make his own. There are a
couple quotes I would like to share with you that I thought especially good
though. The best quote came from Deeds inside his home, coming to grips with the
city:

"People here are funny. They work so hard at living—they forget
how to live. Last night, after I left you, I was walking along and looking at
the tall buildings and I got to thinking about what Thoreau said. They created a
lot of grand palaces here—but they forgot to create the noblemen to put in
them."

I'll also include the poem that Deeds writes for the lady he calls Mary:

I've tramped the earth with hopeless beat, Searching in vain for a
glimpse of you. Then heaven thrust you at my very feet, A lovely
angel, too lovely to woo. My dream has been answered, but my life's just
as bleak. I'm handcuffed and speechless, in your presence divine.
For my heart longs to cry out, if it only could speak. I love you, my
angel, be mine, be mine.

If you hadn't guessed, I love this movie. I think that it shines a ray of
hope into life, and gives a great story of common sense and love winning out
over greed and malice. I'm sure it meant even more to those people struggling
through the Depression, but it still strikes a chord today.

Enough about the film, before I get emotional. Can't have that. This
Columbia Classics collection disc shows the restored film in it's original full
frame aspect. For a 64 year old film, it's very good. Not quite as good as the
restoration on It Happened One Night, which is two years older, but nice.
The image is soft, with some nicks and scratches remaining, and grain present
whenever a foggy scene crops up. But the detail is still there, and shadow
detail is excellent. I'm sure they simply had a worse print to work with than
the other, less seen film.

The audio stands up better, being a two-channel Dolby Digital Mono track. I
found it easier to understand using my two front mains rather than attempting a
Pro-Logic decoding for the center. The sound is clear and dialogue is clearly
understood, though the music had some loss of detail as can be expected from
this type of track.

The extras are considerable, though less than for the last of this
collection I reviewed, It Happened One Night. Like the other disc, it
contains a short featurette with an interview of Frank Capra Jr., and a
commentary track by the same. It had the identical trailers as the other as
well, being those of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Lost Horizon,
and It Happened One Night. Talent files for Jean Arthur, Gary Cooper, and
Frank Capra, and vintage advertising stills comprise the rest of the extras on
the disc, though a 2 page leaflet of production notes is included in the
case.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

Continuing with my thoughts on the extra content, the featurette is very
short, and the commentary track is filled with long gaps without speech, only to
sometimes hear Frank Capra Jr. chuckle or repeat something he had already said.
Some would say it gives the feeling he is watching the film with you, and taken
in that context it is fine.

As for the film, I hate to poke a finger at anything. But certainly seen
through year 2000 eyes some of the jokes just aren't as funny now as they were
then. It was marketed in 1936 as a hilarious comedy; now it's more sweet and
charming. My jaded eyes pick out some falsities in the plot, especially the
courtroom scene, where some definite liberties were taken with judicial process
for dramatic effect. I'm sure the 1936 audiences never blinked an eye at it. The
scene still works, with just a little suspension of disbelief.

Closing Statement

Many feel this is the best Capra film ever made, and it's close to that. I'd
rank It's a Wonderful Life
higher, but I'm still talking about one of the great films of all time. I doubt
it will ever look better than it does here, and the extras, while a bit light,
are still substantial. I just saw it online for under $15 so at that price you
should be hurrying to buy it before the price goes up. A must in any collection
that you want to include classic films in.

The Verdict

It's ludicrous to even consider trying this film, the stars, or its director.
The disc gets a commendation as well. Columbia continues to offer great value
for the movie buff who wants the greats of vintage film.